Jonathan Katz Hates Me

The Antisemitism Patrol sets its sights on Substack.

In his latest post, “More on Substack's Nazis,” a guy named Jonathan Katz, who publishes The Racket,¹ issues a call for censorship on Substack. Ominously subtitled, “And a note about the future of The Racket,” Katz warns, “just beneath the surface, the platform has become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism.” He announces his new article in the ADL-approved Atlantic, which “builds on reporting [he] did earlier this year about Substack corporate’s [sic] promotion of an openly bigoted ‘public intellectual.’” He credits himself for outing this particular “genocidal racist” (no, it wasn’t Bibi “Baby Bomber” Netanyahu), during the process of which he found it necessary to follow some “very dark rabbit holes.”

As everyone on the Internet knows, every very dark rabbit hole accessible through the Internet is swarming with white supremacists, mini-Hitlers, and synagogue shooters, but Katz was incensed by this discovery. There was antisemitism all over the place, he says, but he doesn’t provide any links, so we’ll have to take his word for it. Perhaps, he is a member of Rabbi Fersko’s congregation and he’s talking about that “atmospheric” antisemitism only Jews can detect.

I personally object to someone taking it upon himself to be the designated arbiter of public discourse. I never granted Katz the right to decide for me what I may or may not read, hear, say, write, or think. In fact, I regard as dangerous individuals those who try to claim that kind of authority.

There is something distorted in the soul of a person who advocates removing a person’s right to participate in the political debate on the strength of a label they’ve given him. They are in the same family as the Bolsheviks, who thought it was okay to shoot someone in the head if they called him an “enemy of the people” first. In my view, these budding Bolsheviks like Katz are far more of a threat to our society than anyone you might find in a rabbit hole, however dark.

Back from the rabbit holes, Katz strikes the same tone of overwrought alarm as State Rep. Randy Fine of Florida, who successfully spearheaded a law that provides 10-year prison terms for antisemitic littering. One of the founders of Substack, Katz informs us with sly significance, got his start in tech working for Elon Musk!

As readers know, I am an expert on antisemitism and a ground-breaking researcher in that fascinating field. For example, I was the first to demonstrate the remarkable “perpetual rising” property of antisemitism—a property independent of external conditions—by showing it’s been “rising” for 133 years in a row in the United States. And, I believe I was among the first to point out that the start of that remarkable run coincided with the arrival of large numbers of Russian Jews on these shores. I believe there is a connection—a belief that, by itself, contributes to the perpetual risingness of antisemitism.

Part of my research on antisemitism involves asking for specific details when I come across someone alleging antisemitism. After reading Katz’s call for banning antisemitism on Substack, I was, naturally enough, interested in learning more. Unfortunately, only paid subscribers are allowed to leave comments on Katz’s Racket, so I’ll ask the question here that I had intended to ask there.

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Dear Mr. Katz,

You allege the rabbit holes around here are full of antisemitism and you are, apparently, mounting an effort to purge the site. As someone who frequently writes on the topic, I’m interested in your answer to the following question:

Can a statement be a true statement of fact and still be antisemitic?

I’ll give an example:

When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917, they razed thousands of churches, but left the synagogues unmolested. Indeed, some synagogues, for example, in Odessa, even began receiving state funding to run Yiddish-language schools. The Orthodox clergy, on the other hand, were hunted down like animals and murdered—frequently with their wives and children. Then the Bolsheviks’ revolution murdered more than 60 million Russian Christians.

Not only does this question fall within my research area, I’m also interested to know because I have written this very statement of verifiable, historical fact in the past and will likely write it again in the future. Is the statement antisemitic? Does it make me an antisemite for having stated it? Are you trying to get me banned from Substack?

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Incidentally, on a personal aside, I had a professor at NYU named “Katz.” I had Prof. Katz for a Creative Writing course. That was the course that finally convinced me NYU was a waste of time and money, prompting me to drop out. I know that has nothing to do with you, of course, and I hope you’re not related, but you do share the trait (I’m not saying it’s necessarily genetic or anything) in common with Professor Katz that writing should be judged solely on its conformity to Katz-approved political views.

Here was a typical class with Prof. Katz. He would announce we were going to be writing an essay. The essay would be on our favorite activity. A female (invariably) student from Long Island (invariably) would object on the grounds that the topic was too broad. We should write on something more specific. Twenty minutes later, consensus was reached that specific was better. (I’m switching to the past tense because this is an actual example.) So it was suggested that the specific topic should be our favorite place to shop (I kid you not). Then an FSLI objected on the grounds it’s not the shopping that’s important, it’s what you buy that makes it so fun. Twenty minutes later, consensus was reached that it is indeed the stuff you buy that deserves an essay, so, an FSLI suggested, let’s write about our favorite pair of shoes. Oh. no, that’s too specific, so, another twenty minutes later, we finally settled on “My Favorite Piece of Clothing”—specific, but not overly so.

Yet another Katz. I lived about four blocks from here. There are more white people in this photo than I saw the whole time I lived in the East Village. Okay, I’m exaggerating.

When it came time to write my essay, I realized I didn’t have a favorite piece of clothing, so I walked over to my dresser, opened the drawer, and looked at the contents. In the bottom of the drawer was an old T-shirt that I did kind of like, but I didn’t wear it anymore because it had gotten all ripped up in a street fight. I lived in an area within walking distance of NYU’s Washington Sq campus called Alphabet City. At that time, Alphabet City was so dangerous some cab drivers would only take you as far as Second Ave, and you had to walk the remaining blocks. But apartments were cheap. One night, I’d made it as far as my block when I heard a voice behind me, “Yo, you in the wrong neighborhood, white boy. You got family here?” There were two Puerto Rican guys behind me and another across the street. They attacked, but I managed to stay on me feet. There were blows, but no weapons. I fought back, and they didn’t get anything, but my shirt got all torn up. I was kind of proud they didn’t get my wallet, so I kept the T-shirt for the same reason, probably, a soldier might keep a uniform with a bullet hole in it. Anyway, that was the favorite piece of clothing for my essay.

We had to read our essays aloud in class. After I read mine, even the FSLIs were silent. Finally Prof. Katz spoke. Did he say something like, I think your imagery would have been more effective had you used… Or, by switching to the third person in the fourth paragraph, you… Or, the structure of the piece suffered when you… Or, something having to do with creative writing? No. Prof. Katz’ sole comment was, “Don’t you think that by identifying the protagonists as Puerto Rican, you might offend?”

I finished the semester, but it was that moment in that class when I decided college wasn’t for me.

In those days, they posted your final grades publicly on a wall, anonymized by your student ID. When I checked mine, I saw that I had the lowest grade in the class—lower even than a black guy’s who showed up the first day and was never seen again.

It’s true, I did learn that by identifying as black the student who never returned, I might offend, but he was, in fact, black and the fact of his blackness doesn’t trump my right to tell my story in the way I see fit. Nor does your Jewishness, Jonathan Katz, give you the right to decide how Substack runs their business, nor which of us gets to express our views on it.

1. Not to be confused with Matt Taibbi’s much worthier and less whiny, Racket News